Forgiveness: Part 2

                I’ve come a long way since I wrote the first part of this blog post.  I’ve talked about forgiveness with my counselor, my pastor, and my support group; I’ve heard a sermon about it; I’ve read about it in more books; and even prepared lessons about it, since forgiveness was the kids’ virtue for May.  I think I’ve finally come to peace with what forgiveness looks like.

                I think it’s amazing that such a basic tenet of our faith can be so undefined for me as a 32-year-old, life-long Christian.  The question I’ve been struggling with for months is simply, “What is forgiveness, really?”

                What is forgiveness?  I think my former understanding of forgiveness was that it was a release of negative emotions.  Someone hurt me, but I’m not going to be mad about it or have negative emotions toward that person because I’ve forgiven them.  Now, I think that is a faulty definition.  Forgiveness is not about emotions.  You can forgive someone and still have strong negative emotions toward him.  You make the choice to forgive, and then pray for God to heal your emotions.

                That’s what my counselor told me.  That’s what my pastor told me.  And it didn’t sit well with me for a while.  It doesn’t seem right that you can forgive and still have negative emotions.  After you’ve forgiven, the resentment and anger and hardness should be gone.  That’s what I thought.

                But I’ve made peace with the idea.  We don’t have a lot of control over our emotions.  We can’t make the hard feelings go away just by willing them away.  We can retrain our thoughts, which affect our emotions, but that is a process done over time, not in a matter of moments or days or even weeks.  If I must wait to forgive until there is no hardness at all in my heart, then I will be waiting a long time.

So, if forgiveness is not about changing the way you feel about a person, what is it?

Forgiveness is the choice to not punish, to release your right for restitution.  Forgiveness says, “You hurt me.  You wronged me.  You owe me an attempt to make things right.  But I release you from that obligation.  I will not punish you.  I will not ask you to try to make up for your actions, even though I am angry about those actions.”

This is still very difficult sometimes.  It is okay to enforce consequences for someone’s behavior.  But at what point do consequences become punishment?  That can be a pretty blurry line, especially for the person who feels like they are being punished.

I think the heart of the matter is – the heart.  I have no desire in my heart to punish my husband.  I want to forgive him.  Although I still have hard feelings toward him, those feelings do not motivate my actions toward him.  So I think I can say that I am enforcing consequences, not punishment.

Another facet of forgiveness that I have come to peace with is that it is a process, not an event.  It might happen in a moment, but then again it might stretch out for years.  It’s not that I haven’t forgiven my husband at all; I have started the process.  My heart wants to forgive, and I am forgiving, but I am not done forgiving.

Here is how Jerry Sittser puts it in A Grace Disguised (yes, I know, my frequent quotations of this book are bordering on plagiarism, but it’s just so good!):

“Forgiveness rarely happens in an instant…  Forgiveness is more a process than an event, more a movement within the soul than an action on the surface…  In one sense, forgiveness is a lifelong process, for victims of catastrophic wrong may spend a lifetime discovering the many dimensions of their loss.  I have no vain notions that I have finally and forever forgiven the one who was responsible for the accident.  I may have to forgive many times more – such as at the weddings of my children and at the births of my grandchildren, for these events will remind me not only of gracious gifts given but also of precious people taken away.

“Though forgiveness may not have an ending, it has a beginning.  It begins when victims identify the wrong done to them and feel the anger that naturally rises in the soul.  They realize that what happened to them was inexcusable and should not have happened.  Before victims can show mercy, in other words, they must claim justice.  Before they can forgive, they must accuse.”

Forgiveness is a process.  It starts with recognizing the wrong that was done and calling it what it is.  It is choosing to release the right for punishment or restitution.  It does not necessarily affect a victim’s emotions toward the offender.

Those few sentences seem simple enough, but it took me months to come to these conclusions and have peace about them. 

 Even though I cannot say that I have forgiven my husband, I can say that I am forgiving him.  Even though I still have hard feelings toward him, I can say that those emotions are unwanted.  The hardness that I am discovering in my heart is frightening to me.  I do not want it there.  I want to forgive.  And that desire to forgive is, in fact, the very essence of forgiveness itself.

So now I am trying to navigate that tricky territory between consequences and punishment.  I am trying to figure out how to acknowledge my negative emotions without berating my husband.  I am trying to figure out how to get rid of my negative emotions without simply suppressing them.  I look forward to the day when the relationship is restored, but I am not ready to jump to reconciliation right away.  And so I say, although I have not forgiven my husband, I am in the process of forgiving him.  And I finally have a peace about where I’m at in the process.

Forgiveness: Part 1

           I wrote this blog post at the end of April.  I waited to post it until I had both a better understanding of forgiveness and my husband's permission to share.  Now that I have both, here it is.  :) 

I am learning a lot about forgiveness right now.  I’ve lived a pretty good life, so forgiveness has never been much of a challenge for me.  So now, when forgiveness is more complicated, it’s kinda throwing me for a loop.

I grew up in the church, being taught that we should forgive as freely as God forgives us.  I’ve always taken that to mean that forgiveness needs to be granted when requested (and even before it’s requested, especially since sometimes there is no apology at all), and that after you forgive, you don't bring it up again except to learn lessons for future behavior. 

Our culture also teaches children to say, “I’m sorry,” after committing an offense, regardless of how she truly feels, and the other child must say, “It’s okay,” regardless of how she truly feels.  I think both of these approaches ignore or deny the complex emotions that can be felt when one person injures another.

Let me share an example from my marriage.  My husband got a dog for my son’s third birthday without asking me first.  I was completely against the idea.  We both mishandled the negotiations, but the end result is that we kept the dog, even though my husband knew how I felt about it.  I told him, with a naively high view of myself, that I would be able to handle it without holding it against him.  But I wasn’t able to do as well as I thought.  Every time the dog made a mess, every time I had to spend money on the dog, every time I had to take time out of my day to care for the dog – I resented it.  I was reminded each time of how my husband chose his own will over mine, and how I was stuck with a responsibility that I did not want. 

My emotions were far from resolved.  But I felt like I couldn’t bring it up, because I had “forgiven” him.  What good would it do to bring it up?  He would feel like I was trying to shame him by repeatedly bringing up something from the past.  Would we have decided to get rid of the dog after all?  Probably not.  (I know now, after reading Boundaries, that I was choosing to keep the dog by not getting rid of it myself, and therefore I should not resent my husband for a choice that I was going along with.  But that acknowledgment doesn’t prevent the frustration and sense of injury every time there is a new mess to clean up – every time an unwanted responsibility falls on my shoulders.)

I’ve started wondering if forgiveness isn’t a one-time thing.  Maybe there are situations when you have to forgive the same person for the same act over and over again.  How can I forgive my husband today for an injury that will occur tomorrow?  Maybe every time the dog makes a mess, I have to process my emotions and forgive my husband again.  Even though his choice was made a couple years ago, and even though I’ve already forgiven him for it, maybe I will need to repeatedly forgive him for it so long as we have the dog.

Is that fair?  If so, do I share my emotional process and forgiveness with my husband, so that he knows the full extent of the injury inflicted, or do I just do it silently, so that he doesn’t feel like I am harping on him and just trying to make him feel bad?

So here I am sitting in the most complicated emotional situation I’ve ever been in, and I’m not sure how to really, truly, fully forgive.  I’m reading a two-part book by David Augsburger.  One part is called Caring Enough to Forgive and the other is Caring Enough to Not Forgive.  I read the “Not Forgive” part first and am just a couple chapters into the other part.

The “Not Forgive” portion is what really made me start re-examining my view of forgiveness as a simple, one-time, act of release, regardless of how I may feel at the moment.  Here are some of the points made: 

·         Forgiveness from a morally superior position is not an act of love; it’s an act of derision.  (“I’ll be the bigger man,” for example.)

·         Forgiving someone silently, when they quite possibly don’t even know they’ve injured you, is not an act of love; it’s an act of denial and avoidance.

·         Forgiving from a sense of duty, before you have processed through your emotions, is not truly forgiveness; it’s repression and fantasy.

·         Forgiveness without a willingness to reconcile is not an act of love; it’s an act of estrangement.  Yes, reconciliation takes effort from both parties.  But if you’re not willing to reconcile the relationship under the right circumstances, you haven’t really forgiven.

Reading that book was the first time I’ve heard that if someone says, “I’m sorry.  Please forgive me,” it’s OK to say, “I’m not ready to forgive you yet.”  It’s ok to say, “No, I don’t forgive you now.”?!  Yeah, I think it is.  Further, I think that’s the right response in complicated situations, so that eventually you can say, “I forgive you,” and really, truly mean it.  But it’s okay to take plenty of time to get to that point.

That’s a game changer for me. 

Moving on to the first two chapters of Caring Enough to Forgive.  The first eye-opener that I’ve come across is that a prerequisite to forgiveness is a separation, a breaking of the relationship.  This is true in God’s relationship with us.  Our sin separates us from God.  Forgiveness is the act of healing that separation.

Why is this an eye-opener?  Because I often approach forgiveness as a way to avoid separation, not as a way to overcome it.  “It’s not a big deal.  Don’t worry about it.”  These and other statements are ways to downplay the separation and brokenness of the relationship.  Should we not rather respond as God does?  Recognize the separation and call it what it is.  God makes a big deal out of our separation from him.  Can you picture God saying, “It’s not a big deal.  Don’t worry about it.”?  Of course not!

Could we instead say, “Our relationship is broken because of this.  Let’s take a minute to realize that truth and really feel it.”  Uncomfortable?  Yeah.  But it makes forgiveness that much more beautiful and gives the restored relationship that much more integrity. 

The first step to forgiveness is to fully acknowledge the brokenness of the relationship.  Not just “Your behavior hurt me.”  But, “Your behavior and my pain have separated us.  We no longer have the same relationship we had before.”  And then don’t rush to get that relationship back, but take your time in carefully building a new relationship, making sure you fully deal with emotions and consequences along the way.

I’m not sure I’m explaining the difference very well.  But this is big for me.  I have a tendency to put injuries out of my mind when the relationship seems to be returned to normal.  Instead of fully acknowledging them and dealing with them, I “forgive” them and don’t bring them up again.  It will feel like I’m being petty and picky and nagging to bring up every injury in the future, but I am beginning to think that I must.  That to continue to overlook my perceived injuries is not an act of kindness, but an act of suppression and fantasy.  That to address my perceived injuries and emotions is the only way to love another with full integrity.